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Dick Holland is the proverbial fat cat with a heart of gold. The avuncular Omaha philanthropist has been a major player on the local philanthropic scene for a few decades now. He was already a highly successful advertising executive when he heeded Warren Buffett’s advice and invested in Berkshire Hathaway. Holland and his late wife Mary became part of that circle of local investors who could trace their incredible wealth to that fateful decision to ride the Buffett-Berkshire snowball that made millionaires out of dozens of ordinary investors. Unlike some donors who prefer to remain silent, Holland is not shy about expressing his opinions about most anything. This classic liberal makes no bones about where he stands on social issues, and you have to give him credit – he really does put his money where his mouth is. The causes that he and Mary put their energies and dollars behind have helped shape the social, cultural, aesthetic landscape in Omaha.

When it comes to big time philanthropy in Omaha, a few individuals and organizations stand out. Richard Holland has become synonymous with king-sized generosity through the Holland Foundation he and his late wife Mary started.

If the 88 year-old retired advertising executive is not making some large financial gift he’s being feted for his achievements or contributions. In April he was honored in Washington, D.C. with the Horatio Alger Award “for his personal and professional success despite humble and challenging beginnings.” While his success is indisputable, how much adversity he faced is debatable. Closer to home Holland was presented the Grace Abbott Award by the Nebraska Children and Families Foundation “for his work in creating positive change for children through community.” No one questions his devotion to helping children and families, causes that legendary social worker Grace Abbott of Nebraska championed.

Several area buildings bear the Holland name in recognition of gifts the couple made, including the Holland Performing Arts Center in downtown Omaha and the Child Saving Institute in midtown. Mary was a CSI volunteer and benefactor. Her passion for its mission of improving the lives of at-risk children was shared by Dick once he saw for himself the pains that staff and volunteers go to in “restoring” broken children.

The couple made sharing their wealth, specifically giving back to their hometown, a major priority through the establishment of their foundation in 1997. Since Mary’s death in 2006 Dick, as he goes by, has continued using the foundation’s sizable assets, $60 million today and expected to be much more when he’s gone, to support a wide range of educational, art, health, human service and community projects.

True to his social justice leanings, Holland is a mover and shaker in Building Bright Futures. The birth-through-college education initiative provides an infrastructure of tutoring, mentoring, career advice and scholarship support for disadvantaged youth.

Like many mega donors he prefers deflecting publicity from himself to the organizations he supports. He makes some notable exceptions to that rule, however. For one thing, he vociferously advocates people of means like himself give for the greater good. For another, he believes in speaking his mind about issues he cares about and isn’t afraid to ruffle feathers along the way, even if those feathers belong to a political kingpin.

Just last March Holland took the occasion of accepting the NEBRASKAlander Award from Gov. Dave Heineman to criticize a stance by the conservative Republican leader. Heineman publicly opposes renewal of government-funded prenatal services for low income immigrant women in America illegally. Holland, who supports the care, used the evening’s platform to editorialize.

“No one should be denied prenatal care in Nebraska,” he bluntly told the black tie audience and the governor. His comments were viewed as ungracious or inappropriate by some and as a strategic use of the bully pulpit by others.

Consistent with his Depression-era roots, Holland is not rigidly bound by the constraints of political correctness and so he doesn’t mince words or tip-toe around controversy when he talks. Neither does he hide his political allegiance.

“I’m a liberal Democrat and I underline that,” said Holland, a Unitarian who also prides himself on his free-thinking ethos.

Dick Holland

He recently sat down for an interview at his home, where he readily shared his frank, colorful, unparsed, unapologetic impressions on the state of America in this prolonged recession. Critics may say someone as rich as Holland can afford to be opinionated because he’s already made his fortune and therefore nothing short of a mismanaged investment portfolio can hurt his standing. Besides, dozens of organizations and institutions rely on his goodwill and they’re not about to object to his pronouncements.

Those who know him understand that Holland’s just being himself when he says it like it is, or at least the way he sees it. Most would concede he’s earned the right to say his piece because unlike some fat cats, he worked for a living. His proverbial ship came in only after he’d launched a highly successful business. It was after that he followed his gut and his head and became an early Berkshire Hathaway investor. The millions he accrued made him a Player, but he first made a name for himself as a partner in one of Omaha’s premier advertising agencies, Holland, Dreves and Reilly, which later merged with a Lincoln agency to become Swanson, Rollheiser, Holland, Inc.

All along the way, from young-man-in-a-hurry to middle-aged entrepreneur to mature tycoon, he’s been speaking his mind, only when you carry the clout and bankroll he does, and make the kind of donations he makes, people are more apt to listen.

The Omaha Central High graduate came from an enterprising family. His father Lewis Holland emigrated to the States from London, by way of Canada, where a summer working the wheat fields convinced him his hands were better suited for illustration than harvesting. Lewis settled in Omaha and rose to advertising director for Orchard and Wilhelm Furniture. He later opened his own ad agency, where Dick eventually joined him and succeeded him.

Before Dick became a bona fide Mad Man in the ad game, he began studies at Omaha University. Then the Second World War intervened and after seeing service in the chemical corps he returned home to finish school, with no plans other than to make it in business and study art. Indeed, he was all set to go to New York when he met Mary. Their courtship kept him here, where he found the ad world fed his creative, intellectual, entrepreneurial instincts. He built Holland, Dreves, Reilly into the second biggest agency in the state, behind only Bozell and Jacobs.

He was certainly a well-connected, self-made man, but by no means rich. That is until he started investing with fellow Central High grad Warren Buffett, who is 10 years his junior. Much like Buffett, he’s careful about where he invests and donates his money. When Holland sees a problem or a need he can help with, he does his homework before committing any funds.

“I’m not throwing money at it,” he said, adding that the best thing about giving is getting “results.” He said, “It’s always great to have ideas but somehow or other somebody has to pay, and pay big, in order to get something done.”

The socially-conscious Holland is keenly aware that in these financially unstable times the gap between the haves and have-nots has only widened, something he finds unforgivable in what is held out to be a land of plenty for all

“What has happened in the United States over the past 40 years has been to make a helluva lot of people poor and less wealthy and to make a few people much richer, and we’ve done that by taxation, by trade policies, by not controlling health insurance costs,” he said. “We increased poverty during this period by at least 35 or 40 percent, but the worst thing that’s happened is the middle class itself, which was coming along after World War II very well, suddenly starting making no gain, particularly when inflation’s taken into account.”

He said the great promise of the middle class, that repository of the American Dream, has actually lost ground. The prospects of poor folks attaining middle class status and the-home-with-a-white-picket-fence dream that goes along with it seems unreachable for many given the gulf between minimum wage earnings and home mortgage rates

“It’s almost ridiculous,” he said. “We might as well say we’ve screwed ’em. I mean, it’s a really sad thing because this country is supposed to be a liberal democracy. The general idea is to provide an equal opportunity and life for almost everyone you possibly can. It sure as hell isn’t having huge groups of impoverished people going to prison and posing all kinds of social problems. All these things should be brought under control by education. It is not supposed to be a South American republic with wealth at the top and a whole vast lower class at the bottom, and we’re headed in that direction unless we make some serious changes in the way we approach this subject.”

When Holland considers the deregulated environment that led to unchecked corporate greed, the Wall Street bust, the home mortgage collapse and the shrinking safety net for the disadvantaged, he sees a recipe for disaster.

“We began to deregulate everything, thinking that regulations made things worse and deregulation would make everything better, and the truth is there are a lot of things that need to be regulated, including human behavior in the marketplace,” he said. “We just ignored that. In fact, it’s almost like saying our social system is every man for himself, and that’s crazy. It’s not every man for himself, we’re interdependent on one another on everything we do. This whole thing is wrong. We’re beginning to see we have to make some changes, but the changes I’ve seen so far are not nearly as drastic as I think they should be.

“I guess I sound like a doomsday guy, but I really believe unless we correct some of these things the United States risks its future.”

The health care reform debate brought into stark relief for Holland how far apart Americans are on basic remedies to cure social ills.

“Why can’t we get together more on this?” he asked rhetorically. “I have a hunch that part of it is misunderstanding, a growing ignorance among a large body of the populace, not recognizing just exactly what has happened. Talking about health care reform, poor people or middle class people objecting to it don’t seem to understand all the benefits they’re going to gain from it, they’re worried their health care won’t be as good as it was when it’ll be just as good,”

He said health care reform will help the self-employed and small business employees get the coverage they need but couldn’t afford before and will allow persons with preexisting conditions to qualify without being denied. Someone who will benefit from reform is right under his own roof.

“I have a helper who looks after the house. She has a preexisting condition. I pay her insurance, and it’s just over $1,300 a month,” an amount the woman couldn’t possibly afford on her own. “It’s absolutely wrong,” he said.He said the ever rising cost of health care under a present system of excess and waste drains the nation of vital resources that could be applied elsewhere.

“There’s no question in my mind that a nation as wealthy as the United States having to pay 17 percent of its gross national product for health care versus every other advanced country in the world sticking around 10 or 11 is just leaving several hundred billion dollars on the table that should be available for education, which at the primary level is in terrible shape.”Education has become the main focus of Holland’s philanthropy. Years ago he began seeing the adverse effects of inadequate education. He and Mary became involved in two local programs, Winners Circle and All Our Kids, that assist underachieving schools and students in at-risk neighborhoods. The couple saw the difference that extra resources make in getting kids to do better academically.

Dick Holland with his late wife, Mary

He views education as the key to addressing many of the endemic problems impacting America’s inner cities, including Omaha’s. He wasn’t surprised by what a 2007 Omaha World-Herald series revealed in terms of African-American disparity. Blacks here experience some of the worst poverty in the nation and lag far behind the majority population in employment and education. He said he and other local philanthropists, such as Susan Buffett, were already looking into the issue and formulating Building Bright Futures as a means to close ever widening achievement gaps.

“I think one of the things we don’t really understand really well about cause is the effect of abject poverty,” said Holland. “Most people who have a decent life don’t understand that having no money, no transportation, not having an adequate diet or health care or stimulating opportunities for children in a very poor family is a straight line to prison and social problems. Those children, more than half of them, enter kindergarten not ready at all, with limited vocabularies of 400 words when they should have 1,200 to 1,500, and you can just go from there and it just all goes down hill.”

He said those critical of the job teachers do miss the point that too many kids enter school not ready to learn.

“That’s not because a bunch of teachers are dumb, that’s because there’s a bunch of kids that have not been looked after properly from the beginning. You can blame teachers until the cows come home, but I just say to you, How is a teacher going to teach a child who is that far behind? It’s almost impossible, and that’s the first great neglect. If we had been doing that differently, we would avoid an awful lot of this. In fact, we’d avoid most of it.”

When students enter school unprepared to learn, he said, there’s little that can be done.

“After they get into the grades, there again, there’s no family, no money, no reading, no looking after, no stimulation, no going places, and the net result is the child goes from 1st through 4th grade not catching up and instead starting to diminish. By the 7th and 8th grades they find out they can’t hack it and they get awfully damn tired of being regarded as dumb, and the net effect of that is dropping out.

“It’s as plain as the nose on your face this is what goes on and this is what we don’t do anything about. It’s a tragedy and one of the great national disasters.”

Things get more complicated for children who enter the foster care or juvenile justice systems. Teen pregnancy and truancy add more challenges. The entrenched gang activity and gun violence in Omaha, he said, has at its source poverty, broken homes, school drop outs, lack of job skills and few sustainable employment options.

He said the fact the majority of Omaha Public Schools students come from households whose income is so low they qualify for the free/reduced lunch program indicates how widespread the problem is. “When a child has to have a free lunch all you can say is something is terribly wrong,” he said.

To those who would indict an entire school district he points out OPS students attending schools in middle and upper middle class neighborhoods do as well or better than students in the Westside and Millard districts. He said the real disparity exists between students from affluent environments and those from impoverished environments.

“The way I sometimes put it to people is, ‘The kids make the school.’ It’s a funny thing how we don’t understand this. It’s very obvious to me,” he said, that on average children from “reasonable affluence” do better than children from poverty. He said Winners Circle and All Our Kids, two programs under the Building Bright Futures umbrella, are full of success stories, as is another effort he and Bright Futures endorses, Educare. Through these and other programs Bright Futures is very intentional in putting in place the support students need from early childhood on.

“We’re going to have a thousand kids this year in early childhood programs. We have organizations that are working in something like 12 or 14 schools. We’ve got five hundred volunteers of all kinds. And we actually have cases. From the very beginning it’s been shown that if we get a hold of a child, even after this bad beginning, and mentor him properly we can get him higher up in the education scale. In All Our Kids we have 40 kids in college, 50 that have graduated, several with master’s degrees, and every one of those kids was a kid at risk. So we know what to do if we work hard enough on it. What we have to overcome is the kid who doesn’t think he’s so hot. At home an impoverished child often gets put down, diminishing his ego. We have to overcome that, and that’s one of the things we really try to do.”

Mary Holland recognized there must be a continuum of support in place all through a student’s development. Dick said that’s why she encouraged the merger between Winners Circle, whose focus is on elementary school students, and All Our Kids, whose focus is on junior high and high school students.

“We’re trying to take those kids all the way through the 11th grade, taking them every where and teaching them what college requires, what businesses are like, exposing them to the world,” he said. “Bright Futures is not a five or six year program, it’s a 15-year program. It’s gotta be done like that.”

The idea is to get kids on the right track and keep them there. Getting kids to believe in themselves is a big part of it. “If you don’t have a lot of self-confidence you don’t try things, and we try to overcome that. With some kids it works. Some find out, I’m better than I thought, I can do that.”

The goal is qualifying students for college and their attaining a higher education degree. Towards that end, Bright Futures works with students from 12th grade through college.

“We follow you there,” said Holland. “We’ve set up things in universities to help people. We’re still trying to bring it all together. It’s an effort to refresh, restore, make them understand what they have to achieve in order to do anything in life.”

Enough funding is in place that cost is not an issue for Bright Futures students.

“We have adequate scholarship money for thousands, we don’t even have to worry about that, and yet we don’t have enough people to take them that qualify. Just because you graduate from high school doesn’t mean you’re ready for college. Sometimes I think they (schools) get ‘em out of high school just to get ‘em out of high school.”

Holland has a better appreciation than most for the barriers that make all this difficult in practice. He and Mary mentored some young people through All Our Kids and they experienced first-hand how things that most of us take for granted can be stumbling blocks for others. He recounted the time he and Mary mentored a young single mother. Things started out promisingly enough but then a familiar pattern set in that unraveled the whole scenario. He said the young woman got a job, her employer liked her and her performance, but she stopped coming to work and she got fired. The same thing happened at another job. And then another. Each time, he said, the challenge of affording child care, getting health problems addressed and finding reliable transportation sabotaged both the young mother’s and the Hollands’ best efforts.

“She couldn’t hold a job, and we gave up,” he said. It’s not something he’s proud of, but he’s honest about the frustration these situations can produce. Other mentoring experiences ended more positively but still highlighted the challenges people face.

“You find out an awful lot about how tough this is because they don’t have the same kind of get up and go confidence like my daughters, who think that nothing is beyond them. You try to instill that, and when you see a little bit of it happening it’s worth the price of admission.”

He acknowledges that despite government cutbacks there’s still plenty of public aid to help catch people who fall through the cracks. But he feels strongly that a different emphasis is required — one that helps people become self-sufficient contributors.

“We have all kinds of government programs designed to grab these people as they fall off the cliff. The failure is to raise them so they can climb cliffs. There’s no question in my mind sooner or later it’s going to be a major government project. It has to be.”

Policies also need to change in terms of guaranteeing people a living wage, he said.

“Let me give you an idea of how we look at things,” said Holland. “We had a $2 (hourly) minimum wage in 1975 and that was adequate to get people out of poverty, it really was. But since the ‘80s the minimum wage has not kept pace with the cost of living and inflation. It’s kept people in poverty. The Congress of the United States, Republicans and Democrats alike, failed to really go after that. They failed to understand it.”

He said despite the minimum wage having increased to $7.25 in Nebraska and higher in other states, “it ought to be $10 or $11” to give families a chance of not just getting by but getting ahead. “We’re not looking at this problem the right way, we’re just creating it. There’s a dismissal of the problem by people that don’t have it.”

Similarly, he said early childhood programs must be learning centers not babysitting or recreational centers, that address the entire needs of children.

“We have a fractional help system. Somebody helps them after school, somebody sets up a club, somebody sets up something else over here. Some of those after school things make you feel better, they’re fun to go to, they’ve got cookies, but that doesn’t focus on their actual intellectual needs. There’s a lot of that that goes on.”

Holland calls for systemic change that comprehensively affects lives.

“I’m more and more positive it’s going to take a revolution. We’re going to have to stop what we’re doing and start doing something along the lines I’ve talked about. At various times there’s been various suggestions about poverty, but one thing that will help alleviate poverty a helluva lot is money, there’s no getting around it. If it takes 5 or 10 percent of the gross national product it will be a benefit over time because once you have a little money you begin to be able to do a few things, and then you begin to learn a few things, and your children do the same.”

A model approach in his eyes is Educare’s holistic early childhood education. “We’re (surrogate) parents there, that’s what we are,” he said, “and the people that bring their children there know what’s happening, they know that suddenly the whole world is opening for that child. When those kids enter kindergarten they’re ready, they’ve got these big vocabularies. We know it can be done, but we also know the price.”

To those who might balk at the $12,000-$13,000 annual cost of caring for a child in a state-of-the-art center, he said it’s but a fraction of what it costs to incarcerate someone or to navigate someone through the justice system or the foster care system.

Agree or disagree with him, you can be sure Dick Holland will continue putting his money where his mouth is and where his heart is.

I was asked by Metro Magazine to write a 20-year retrospective piece on the Omaha arts-culture scene and the story that follows is the result. The story is my take and the take of a few others on the city’s creative community, which by almost any measure has experienced a maturation and flat-out growth that has drawn attention near and far, including a widely read and circulated piece (“Omaha Culture Club”) by Kurt Andersen in the New York Times a few years ago. Yeah, Omaha has indeed grown up a lot in the space of a generation and today is much more the cosmopolitan metropolis of its aspirations than it was 20 years ago. I anticipate that growth to continue too. Omaha is still a city without much of an image outside Nebraska, particularly on the coasts, but it is increasingly getting known for its sophisticated, even world-class arts-cultural offerings among the cognoscente. If you’re still doubtful and skeptical about that, then simply check out some websites devoted to Omaha or better yet the next time you’re traveling cross country don’t simply fly over or drive over without giving the place a second thought, stop here and stay awhile and see for yourself just what Omaha has to offer.

Twenty years ago Omahans grumbled about there not being enough to do here. For a city searching for an image in a flyover state straining to retain its best and brightest and attract new talent, it sounded an alarm.

Seemingly, Omaha arts-culture plateaued. Major players retrenched while smaller, newer ones tried finding their way. It appeared Omaha collectively lacked the vision or confidence to enhance its horizons. The status quo went stale.

Then, whether by design or coincidence, Omaha enjoyed a renaissance in the space of a single generation. This flowering shows no signs of slowing down.

“Over the last 20 years Omaha has grown up a lot and the arts have grown up with it,” said Todd Simon, an Omaha Steaks International executive and a major arts funder. “There’s certainly a lot more variety and a lot more choices for our community. Any night of the week you can open up the newspaper or go on the Web and you can find something of interest to you. Whether it’s music, art, film, live theater, there is something for everyone every night of the week in Omaha now.

“If you’re bored here it’s because you’re not breathing. If you can’t find something to do in Omaha right now, shame on you.”

Saddle Creek Records executive Jason Kulbel was among those bemoaning the lack of options. No more.

He champions the live indie music scene now having more venues and he embraces the festivals that have cropped up, from MAHA to Playing with Fire to the newly announced Red Sky Music Festival.

Kulbel and SCR colleague Robb Nansel have added to the mix with their block-long North Downtown complex. It includes their company headquarters, the Slowdown bar-live music showplace and the Film Streams art cinema. Together with the new TD Ameritrade ballpark, Qwest Center Omaha, the Hot Shops Art Center and the Mastercraft art studios, anchors are in place for a dynamic arts-culture magnet akin to the Old Market.

From the opening of the downtown riverfront as a scenic cultural public space to the addition of major new venues like the Qwest and the Holland Performing Arts Center to the launching of new music, film and lit feasts to the opening of new presenting organizations, Omaha’s experienced a boon. Major concerts, athletic events and exhibits that bypassed Omaha now come here.

Artists like world-renowned Jun Kaneko put Omaha on the map as never before. The indie music scene broke big thanks to artists recording on the Saddle Creek label. Alexander Payne immortalized his hometown by filming three critically acclaimed feature films here. The Great Plains Theatre Conference brought Broadway luminaries in force.

The Old Market solidified itself as a destination thanks to an array of restaurants, shops, galleries, theaters and creative spaces. The Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, the Blue Barn Theatre and the Omaha Farmers Market became anchors there. Omaha Fashion Week and the Kaneko added new depth.

Omaha Performing Arts president Joan Squires said she’s seen “a huge change” since arriving eight-plus years ago from Phoenix to head the organization, which programs the Holland and the Orpheum Theater.

“The first time I drove in from the airport the Qwest Center didn’t exist, the Holland wasn’t here, a lot of the small groups weren’t around. If you were looking for things to do and it wasn’t the Orpheum or a few other places, it was limited. Now on any given night the breadth of what you can do is exciting. There’s a synergy about it that’s reaching all segments of the audience.”

Omaha native Rachel Jacobson left New York to launch Film Streams, one of several attractions that’s taken things to a new level.

Growing up here, she said, “there was a lot of good stuff to do but nothing really bringing people to town or being talked about in the national and international press, other than Chip Davis. Today, the Omaha arts community is strong, it’s alive, it’s visceral, it’s something we’re known for worldwide. Musicians continue to move here from other cities to make their home here because of Saddle Creek Records. Visual artists move here because of the Bemis and Jun and Ree Kaneko. New galleries are opening up all the time.

“It has really blown up in the best way.”

Established organizations have shown new life. Joslyn Art Museum built a huge addition designed by noted architect Sir Norman Foster. It’s since added a pair of sculpture gardens. The Durham Museum underwent a refurbishment and gained Smithsonian affiliation. The Omaha Children’s Museum found a new home and completed extensive renovations. The Omaha Community Playhouse redid its theater and lobby spaces. The Henry Doorly Zoo built the Lied Jungle, the Desert Dome, the Lozier IMAX Theater and other new attractions.

The Bemis expanded its gallery exhibition schedule and educational programming as well as added the Underground and the Okada. Now it’s poised for new growth.

Old venues received serious makeovers. An Orpheum renovation allowed the largest touring Broadway shows to come. The city spent millions in renovating Rosenblatt Stadium, in turn helping it become a national icon.

Existing organizations found new digs.The Omaha Symphony made the Holland its home. The Emmy Gifford Children’s Theater moved into the old Astro (Paramount) movie house, renamed The Rose, and became the Omaha Theater Company.

Popular events drew ever larger crowds, such as Jazz on the Green, the Cathedral Flower Festival, the Summer Arts Festival and the CWS.

Even with all the new options, it didn’t appear as if Omaha reached a saturation point. Using the Holland and Orpheum as examples, Joan Squires said the presence of these two venues has only increased patronage.

“When you open a major facility and you bring in new arts offerings the community continues to lift up,” she said. “It broadens and really makes more things possible. In the last five years we’ve reached 1.7 million people. We’ve seen nights where both buildings sold out and there’s a lot of arts going on at other facilities all at the same time, and there’s an audience for everybody.

“We’ve got a growing and thriving arts community. I think it’s very encouraging.”

Funder Dick Holland describes the arts as “an economic engine” and “a big part of the community.”

Great Plains Theatre Conference artistic director Kevin Lawler, a Blue Barn founder, has seen a more adventurous scene develop.

“There are several new generations of artists making work in all genres and receiving support and interest from their peers and others,” he said. “This heralds the beginning of a new, vibrant era for arts and culture here. That small group of philanthropic leaders who have been supporting the arts in Omaha for years have enabled enough fertilization for this new blossoming to begin.

“When we began the Blue Barn there were almost no theaters willing to take on new, challenging work as a regular part of their seasons. Now, there are a number of groups that follow this path.”

Lawler notes there “is a new generation of artists staying in Omaha to make work because they feel there is enough energy in the community to support and respond to their work. I feel this trend reflected not only in theater, but all the arts.

“There are stages to the cultural life of a city. Omaha is in a blossoming stage. It is a rare and exciting time to be here.”

The linchpin behind this growth is private support. “Omaha has an exceptionally generous philanthropic community that understands the value of investing in its cultural institutions,” said Bemis director Mark Masuoka, adding that funders here appreciate the fact the arts “improve quality of life.”

He said the Bemis is close to reaching its $2.5 million capital building campaign goal “thanks to several generous gifts from local foundations and individuals.”

What losses there were sparked new opportunities. After years of struggle the Great Plains Black History Museum rebounded. When Ballet Omaha folded Omaha Performing Arts brought in top dance troupes and Ballet Nebraska soon formed. The Omaha Magic Theatre closed only to birth new ventures. The Indian Hills Theater was razed but Omaha movie houses multiplied. The Kent Bellows Studio and Center for Visual Arts arose after its namesake’s tragic death.

The recession impacted large and small organizations alike.

Todd Simon said, “Many not-for-profits have struggled and I think they’ll continue to struggle in these economic times, but I also think there is a dedicated group of supporters in our community who will step up to fill the gaps.” These lean times, he said, encouraged “many organizations to get smarter in how they use resources and how they collaborate with each other, where they leverage the talent and the resources they have. I think that trend will continue.”

Dick Holland said few cities can boast Omaha’s philanthropic might. He favors a public-private coalition to undergird and concentrate arts funding.

By any measure, it’s been an era of net growth for the creative community and leaders see more progress ahead thanks to a spirit of innovation and support.

“A strong legacy of investing in the arts here has been established and I believe it will continue to proliferate,” said Rachel Jacobson. “We’ll see new initiatives develop, especially arts in education and social-community development arts projects. There are a lot of high-energy, incredibly innovative people who have a huge heart for this city and will make a strong commitment.

“Just in the last month I’ve heard about wonderful projects in the works. I’m excited for the next 20 years.”

Something I would like to do more of is luxuriate in the warm cascade of live symphonic music. My girlfriend and I happened to attend an Omaha Symphony program when I read in the program that two orchestra players were celebrating 50 years each with the organization. That sparked my doing the following article. Violinist Marcia Hinkle and French Horn player Bill Sprague proved gracious subjects and I am confident you will find them as charming as I did. My story originally appeared in the New Horizons.

Fifty years doing the same job, for the same organization, is a rare feat anymore. That’s why when Omaha Symphony Orchestra players Marcia Hinkle and Bill Sprague marked their 50th anniversaries last spring it was cause for celebration. The musicians were recognized on a flyer in the program for the 2008-2009 season’s final Masterworks concert at the Holland Performing Arts Center. The veteran second violinist and French Horn player, respectively, were singled out prior to the performance of Mahler’s 5th, taking bows before an appreciative crowd. The pair were also feted at parties following the concert.

Omaha natives Hinkle and Sprague took singular paths reaching this golden anniversary. They’re believed to be only the second and third musicians to ever notch the milestone with the orchestra. Neither has plans to retire. Music is too much a part of their lives to imagine life without it.

They’ve seen the evolution from a community-based, part-time orchestra to one with a full-time professional core. Along the way, the Symphony’s grown in terms of artistry, staff, budget, schedule and outreach. They’ve served six music directors and survived numerous board turnovers. They’ve performed in all manner of venues, from the Holland to the Music Hall to the Joslyn to the Orpheum to Ak-Sar-Ben Coliseum to Peony Park’s Royal Grove to Memorial Park to Lewis & Clark Landing to Gene Leahy Mall. They’ve weathered wind, rain, bugs, egos, makeovers, strikes.

In a simpler time when schools honored students for their combined character, personality, appearance, academics and extracurricular activities, Marcia Hinkle was named Best All-Around Girl at Omaha North High School. “I was in a lot of things” she said. “I was the boys sports editor, I played tennis, I played in the orchestra, I was the drum majorette for the band and I was a decent student.”

It was the mid-1950s and the striking, athletic, talented, vivacious blond embodied the wholesome qualities of the All-American Girl Next Door. Think Sandra Dee. She even won the title of Miss Omaha after a fraternity put her up for it, making appearances during the city’s centennial celebration year (1954).

As a young woman Hinkle was the spitting image of Doris Day’s or Donna Reed’s Goodie-Good screen personas. She was the picture-perfect wife, mother and homemaker who still found time to play tennis, to volunteer — with the Junior League, the PTA, the Omaha Community Playhouse, among others. Where the similarity stopped is that Marcia was also a serious symphony musician. Then, as now, that meant sacrificing some family time in order to fulfill the demands of busy concert and rehearsal schedules and performing in string ensembles (the Myron Cohen and Midlands String Quartets). She began a second career as a real estate agent in the ‘70s that she continues today.

“I’m not absolutely dynamic or terrific at any particular thing,” she said, “but I’m pretty good at quite a few things.”

Not all was so picture-perfect. She and her first husband ended up divorcing after their three kids were grown. Through a mutual friend she then met Don Hinkle, her husband of nearly three decades years now. The two had actually gone on a blind date together in college but had not seen each other since. When they did, both were middle-aged, divorced, single, soon-to-be empty-nesters unsure if they wanted to take the plunge again but certain they were right for each other. Besides, he was a fellow real estate agent and tennis nut. They became partners in business and in life. Their CBS Home Real Estate office has flourished during their marriage.

“We’ve been multi-million dollar producers for 30 years,” she said proudly. Being a people-person is a must in that game. “I enjoy people,” she confirmed.

Marcia and Don are still actively engaged in helping put folks in homes, including some of her symphony colleagues — “I just sold one to another violinist.” Any marriage that can survive decades as realtors together must be solid. “We’ve just always gotten along together,” she said. “We enjoy working together. He’s not a huge symphony-goer. He loves the Pops and the lighter classics. But I haven’t gotten him to be a total die-hard for the masterworks. We also had the tennis connection.”

They played mixed doubles for years. “He would still be playing but he ended up with two new hips and then he ended up with bone cancer,” she said. When not caring for Don and attending to her symphony gigs, she’s likely tending her home or playing a match. “I love it. I still play. I’m in a ladies tennis league that’s been going probably 42 years now. There’s still quite a few of us playing that were in that original group. We play a competitive level of tennis once or twice a week. It’s great exercise. It’s a wonderful lifetime sport.”

The couple share a comfortable home in northwest Omaha’s Sunny Slope neighborhood. She’s as busy as ever these days between the symphony, her tennis and her grandkids but her and Don’s life has changed in one significant way recently — his cancer. It’s meant making certain accommodations, but they’re not letting the disease stand in the way of enjoying each other.

Marcia Hinkle, second from left, and the Midlands String Quartet

Through it all, music’s been the one constant in Marcia’s life, though it’s not something that’s consumed her. By some measures, she even got a late start. She was in 3rd grade when she began playing the tonette or song flute. In the 5th grade it was recommended she try the violin. It was as if the stringed instrument and her were made for each other. Still, she wasn’t completely carried away. “At one point I told my parents, ‘I don’t want to play,’ and they said, ‘OK.’ So I put my instrument down and two or three weeks later I decided I really did. That was sort of the turning point.”

An only child, Marcia was the apple of her Storz Brewery business manager father, Bill Wetzler, and her homemaker mother. Her dad started her playing tennis. She got her strokes down hitting against the garage door of her family’s home on Belvedere Blvd. across from Miller Park. She played on the North High girls squad. She went on to win state club titles.

Music was just another activity but as she progressed it became more than that. She was concertmaster with both the North High orchestra, which enjoyed a fine reputation, and with the All-City Youth Orchestra.

“I had a really fine high school teacher named Sam Thomas. He was a violinist. He coached and helped prepare me and a lot of other students for the music profession. He was very encouraging. He was one of my mentors.”

Surprisingly, she did not major in music at college. Instead, she majored in education. She was actually interested in studying law but the restrictive times discouraged her from pursuing such a male-centric field.

She tarried with the piano in college but, she said, “I had a horrid time. I couldn’t read bass clef.” She regrets not having learned piano first and then violin. She doesn’t recommend doing it “backwards” the way she did. After college she worked as an Omaha Public Schools 3rd and 6th grade teacher for two-plus years. Her husband Don also taught for a time.

Following her classroom gig she got hired by the Joslyn Art Museum as program hostess, a job that entailed supervising various events.

Music was always in her life. “I just wanted to play,” she said. “I liked performing. I didn’t have aspirations of being a soloist on the New York stage or anything. I really enjoyed playing in the orchestra setting. That was my forte. I didn’t like solo work that much. I suppose my passion honestly developed when I did more of the masterworks and the classics with the symphony. You know, they’re beautiful and thrilling to play as well as listen to, and they’re challenging, and that’s fun, too.”

She said she long ago found her niche playing as part of ensembles rather than soloing. “I suppose it’s gotten to be a comfort level over the years. If you’re going to be a soloist and enjoy it I think you have to do it pretty often to really not get uptight and nervous. I enjoy so much more being in an orchestra and there’s a talent to being an orchestra musician versus a soloist. Not every solo performer can be an orchestral person. Probably a lot of orchestral players can be soloists. I also love the people. I’ve sold a lot of them houses. A lot of them I call ‘my kids.’”

The man responsible for bringing her to the Omaha Symphony was its then-music director, Richard Duncan, one of her teachers at UNO, whose orchestra she played in. “I didn’t study with him until about my junior year in college,” said Marcia. “I worked with him a couple years and he was the one that encouraged me.” She recalled Duncan as “a very fine violinist” and taskmaster. “He wanted you to be a very diligent student, which became difficult because I was very widespread by my senior year in college.” Within a short span her appendix was removed, she married, she earned her degree, she began teaching and she joined the Symphony. All at age 20. Then came her three children.

Her new taskmaster became Joseph Levine, who replaced Duncan as music director. Even before the demands of a family, a home and a day job she had trouble making time for as much practice as her conductors expected. Her saving grace was being a quick study, “I always was blessed with an ability to sight read well, which they knew, but they still thought I should be spending more time practicing.” Once in the orchestra intensive attention to her craft became paramount. “It takes a tremendous commitment,” she said. So she found ways to fit in all the prep and performances around her many other responsibilities. Still, there were and are sacrifices she’s had to make in her personal life. Her loved ones perhaps didn’t always like it but they understood.

“I feel extremely blessed. My family’s been really wonderful in letting me do this. Your family has to be supportive or you can’t do it. You can’t be gone the hours you’re gone. You end up missing birthdays and…that’s just what you do. I mean, you do that with a lot of professions, but with the symphony the show always must goes on. You’re there and you do it and it doesn’t much matter what else it is. This takes priority. Like I love tennis, but when I’m doing a lot of music I don’t do tennis. Music is my first love. I love playing. I guess it’s just something that happens to you and I’m just grateful for everything I’ve been able to do in music.”

Over these 50 years she’s nary missed a scheduled performance, with the exception of a rare illness. She still eats the same preconcert meal she always has — a home cooked hamburger — and still plays the same violin she came to the symphony with a half-century ago. In fact, it’s the same one she’s primarily played since age 11. For that reason alone, it holds much sentimental value.

“I’ve had it ever since 8th grade,” said Marcia. “It’s a pretty nice violin. It was supposedly an Enrico Rocca-made instrument but I was told by someone that was not correct. Somewhere, years back, I had a certificate (of authenticity), but it’s long disappeared. I’m hoping one of my grandchildren will play it and I’ll pass it onto them. We’ll see. It’s served me well.”

She said her parents purchased it from Nielsen Violin Shop in Omaha, a third-generation store where such world-class string players as Isaac Stern, Fritz Kreisler and Midori have come to peruse its high-caliber instruments, bows and accessories.

Her violin’s unchanged but the orchestra she plays in is quite different than the one she joined 50 years ago. Besides wholesale changeovers in personnel, it’s gone from second-rate to first-class. “It’s a tremendous difference,” she said. “The repertoire we play is much more challenging, the level of performance is much better, the qualifications of the musicians are much better. I mean, there were some really talented musicians in the past but we have extremely talented people (across the board now). We just have experienced a lot of growth.”

That growth did not come without a cost. In the mid-’70s music director Thomas Briccetti and the Symphony board moved away from an orchestra drawn almost exclusively from community members to a core group drawn from the best players in the world. At least the best artists Omaha could afford to attract. That meant demoting some existing players and letting others go. Some left on their own, feeling insulted or betrayed their many years of service were not appreciated.

“It was a tough time,” she said. “That was a difficult change. Kind of heart-breaking in a way. We lost some people that were really good musicians that I wish would have stayed with us.”

There was also a musicians strike around then that brought long simmering tensions between artists and management to a head. In its wake she formed the Omaha Symphony Committee, a musicians group to voice their interests. “We really needed to be able to sit down and talk about things and the committee did sit down with board members. It was a very good thing.” So good that the differences were resolved and the committee still exists today as a vehicle for airing grievances, settling disputes and keeping the lines of communication open.

“You don’t want to get involved in something like a strike, You want to be able to talk about things in good discussions before the problem is too big.” She said there hasn’t been an outright strike since, although there’s been a work stoppage. “We missed a few concerts,” she said.

Marcia’s pro-active efforts reflect her conciliatory nature. “I don’t like to be negative, I like for people to be happy, especially when you’re making music. You don’t make beautiful music when you’re not feeling somewhat beautiful. It’s a lot more fun when everybody’s happy about what they’re doing.” One perpetual complaint that hasn’t changed, she added, is the pay symphony players receive.

Fifty years and counting and she’s still looking forward to the next season. “It’s been a great joy to play with the Symphony and to be a part of that organization. I can’t believe it’s been that long. I just kind of keep going. I don’t stop and think about it. I’m very happy to be here today and hopefully I’ll be here tomorrow.” She said she’s certain she’ll know when it’s time to step down. Until that time comes, however, she said she plans to continue “as long as I’m qualified, as long as I’m doing my job the way it should be done.”

A life without playing music is inconceivable. “It would be hard. I’m not sure I could just sit and listen. I just don’t know,” she said. “I’m so used to performing it. That’s what I enjoy most.”

Bill Sprague — Tinker, Teacher, Player, Cat

For almost as long as he can remember Bill Sprague’s had an affinity for music and tinkering with things. At 64 he’s still making music as an Omaha Symphony French Horn player and he’s still a Mr. Fix It specializing in instrument repair at his The Horn Works store in Ralston, Neb.

It’s not an exaggeration to say Sprague’s played with the symphony since coming of age. His unlikely start began as a 14 year-old Omaha Benson High School freshman. He was already well advanced despite having picked up the horn for the first time only five years earlier, in 4th grade. He took piano lessons before that at the insistence of his mother, a pianist who also taught the instrument. He was an only adopted child. His mother wisely didn’t try to instruct her son but even the private teacher she hired couldn’t get Bill to embrace the keyboards. “It did nothing for me,” he said. But the first time he laid sight on that shiny horn, he was smitten.

His horn work was confined to school lessons that first year and then his folks got him a private instructor, Don Swaggard, who played in the Symphony. Bill credits much of his early development to Swaggard, who still teaches today.

“I progressed, I wouldn’t say phenomenally quickly. I got from a beginner’s point to a reasonably good player by junior high,” said Bill. “Being in all city bands and orchestras and all those things I was usually at the top of the section or pretty close to the top. I got to the place where I was feeling pretty good about myself.”

Away from music, Bill learned what it meant to be meticulous working in the stock room at the family’s Sprague Pharmacy in Benson. He was also getting skilled using his dad’s woodworking tools, doing refinishing projects, and anything to do with cars. As a teen he worked at a Chevrolet auto dealership installing hubcaps, carpet, radios, air conditioners, you name it, on new arrivals.

By ‘58 Symphony music director Joseph Levine began a training orchestra of this area’s finest young musicians called the Omaha Youth Symphony, which is still going strong today. Bill’s private coach identified his protege as a prime candidate and, sure enough, Bill made the grade. Even in the Youth Symphony he stood out, as he was younger than any of the other players, who were largely high school or college upperclassmen. The experience of playing with the group had a big impact on the teen. “I really got to loving the orchestral music,” he said. Being pegged a rising star among local players meant being “a big fish in a small pond,” he said, “but nevertheless it was a very gratifying feeling.”

When a seat in the regular adult Symphony opened that next season Swaggard urged Bill to go for it. “Don was an aggressive person about that sort of thing and had he not been so in favor of it and really pushing on it I probably wouldn’t have done it, at least not with the (same) vigor. I wanted it, but mostly because he said, ‘This is something you can get, this is something you can do.’” Swaggard didn’t mislead either, telling Bill he would have to work harder than he ever had before to reach a level he couldn’t yet appreciate. “And all of that was true,” said Bill. “It did take a great deal more work. He really paved the way with the conductor, Joseph Levine, and got him to believe that he could take somebody like me and work with me and make it happen.”

Bill did make it, as did a Youth Symphony percussionist and a violinist. Earning a Symphony slot — as 4th French Horn — at 14 is analogous “to a kid playing Pop Warner League ball suddenly getting to play semi-pro ball, just like that,” he said, snapping his fingers. “How awesome it was to be at that level. It was amazing. I felt I was really special and I had that feeling for a number of years.”

How was Bill treated at the start by veteran musicians old enough to be his parents or grandparents?

“More as a novelty than anything at first,” he said. “The age difference was so great that it was hard for them to really believe that you belonged. It took awhile to really gain any acceptance and you had to earn it, definitely earn it. I would say the three of us were the type of players that were willing to work on that and earn it and to find out what it took to do it and gain that respect.”

He said “it probably wasn’t until I was into the college years” that that respect was granted. He continued his development at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, earning bachelor’s and master’s degrees in music education and performance. He taught and was a band director in the Papillion and Bellevue public schools. Meanwhile, he and childhood sweetheart, Kathie, a retired teacher and fellow musician, married and raised two sons, both of whom are musicians. His wife does the books at The Horn Works and both boys have apprenticed as repair technicians there. Drew is electronic department manager and does percussion and electronic repair. David works for the state.

Bill’s penchant for working with his hands made it “natural” and practical that he began repairing his own horns in his basement. He moved on to working on a wide range of students’ and professionals’ instruments. He was very intentional about learning the trade of instrument repair from masters and mentors he sought out.

“All of whom have passed away,” he said, “and this is kind of the way this profession is. We don’t have many of us and there’s not a lot of guys hammering at the door to get in and find out how to do this. I would say the number one person was Charlie Sheppard. As a teacher I used to go out and hang around with him during vacation breaks. A lot of schools would send instruments in during Christmas break because nobody’s using them then. I’d watch and learn from him. It takes a lifetime and you may never get there, but you can watch somebody who knows, who’s already made the mistakes and learned the ways to do it, and it helps a lot.”

Ultimately, he said, “you learn by doing.” Before long, Charlie, who also played and taught music, trusted his protege. “He’d say, ‘Here, go do this one,’ handing me a horn. “So I did that. It’s a trial and error method.” Bill misses the Charlies and their Old World shops. “It was just fascinating to watch these guys sitting at their benches working on things. There was something about those shops — you got within a hundred feet and you could smell the chemicals. Today, EPA and OSHA rules prohibit that. But I loved that smell. I mean, you could get high on it,” he said, laughing.

Being mechanically inclined helped Bill master the craft but working on trumpets and motor vehicles are worlds apart. “The biggest difference is that an instrument is so much more finely concentrated with so many small pieces in very small areas,” he said. Where a car dent fender may entail hammering, disc grinding, painting and priming, a horn dent involves a refined burnishing process whose tools must reach narrow, hard to access spaces. Some tools are like plumbers’ snakes with strings of teflon-coated ball bearings thread through the instrument’s arteries and guts. Surgical-like copes are sometimes used to see up inside joints.

That’s not to say Bill and his techs never get to pound things. Sometimes a repair requires heating the metal and hammering or pressing it back into shape. The only way to get at some problems is to dismantle the piece. After decades diagnosing and doctoring instruments, Bill’s just about seen it all. “I think there’s not too many we haven’t encountered,” he said. A unique one was a sousaphone with a rotted peach stuck in its tubing. The gunk had to be rotor-rooted out.

Occasionally a name musician comes into the shop. One is former Tonight Show band leader Doc Severinson. “I’ve known Doc now for better than 30 years,” said Bill. “The first time he played Omaha with the Symphony he needed something done on his trumpet and one of the players in our section said, ‘Well, just give it to Bill, he’ll take a look.’ Doc did and Bill brought the famed’s musician’s trumpet back to the shop and took care of the problem. Before Bill could call to say he’d fixed it Doc showed up. “He just couldn’t be without it any longer,” said Bill.

Bill delights in an anecdote from Doc’s visit. After testing out his patched-up horn Doc pawed through a box of odds-and-ends Bill kept — spare parts and just plain junk — when hr fished out a filthy mouthpiece, put it in his mouth and buzzed it just as Bill warned, “No, don’t do that!” Too late. “You want to sell this?” Doc asked, none-the-worse-for-wear. “You can keep it, I was going to throw it away,” Bill replied, shocked that a world-class artist would want it. “It was an old New York Bach 3 mouthpiece and he couldn’t have too many of them,” Bill noted.

“Every time since then when he comes to town we sit down and talk in the rehearsal room or in his dressing room. On three occasions he’s come to the store. He’d rather come here and talk to us than sit in his hotel room all day. Once, he took us all to lunch. We worked on four of his instruments at the same time. His horns actually were in pretty bad shape for a guy at that level. It was amazing to us he could and would play on those.” Bill and his crew also did some silver plating for Doc. “He’s a very nice man and, oh, the stories he tells us about his life.”

Another star Bill has a long relationship with is Chip Davis, the visionary Omaha musician behind American Gramaphone and Mannheim Steamroller, with whom Bill’s played off and on from the start. Bill drove Itzhak Perlman between Omaha and Lincoln for a series of symphony engagements, allowing him to hear “all these marvelous stories of his life.”

The orchestra keeps Bill plenty busy but he’s also played with the Lincoln, Sioux City and Des Moines symphonies — when they put out calls for extra brass — and with the Omaha-based Palladium Brass Quintet. He does some teaching with the Omaha Youth Symphony and with private students. His full-line Horn Works store, which he’s run full-time since retiring from the classroom, does more than just repair instruments. It sells them and offers lessons.

Bill’s still learning himself even after all these years. He fondly recalls former Omaha Symphony maestro Victor Yampolsky as a superb teacher who brought out the best in him and in the orchestra. “No question in my estimation he was the finest conductor/musician we’ve had around here. When he was here he was always teaching and there wasn’t anybody that wasn’t always just right there (with him).”

An Omaha Symphony career was Bill’s goal but he never thought he’d still be at it 50 years and counting. “Am I proud? Yes I am, very much so,” he said. “To be 50 years in about anything — a marriage, a job — is a milestone. For most of us it’s at least half our life, if not more. It’s a big deal to do something for that long and to still enjoy it, and I know Marcia (Hinkle) does just as I do. You do this not because it’s a habit, you do it because you enjoy it. If they would stop paying me tomorrow I’d continue to do it,” said Bill, hastily adding, “I don’t want them to know that.”

He’s committed to keep right on enjoying it, too. “As long as I can keep my job by doing what I do well enough to stay in there I want to play with the Symphony. I had no idea it would be this long either but I also didn’t think I was going to use Omaha as a steppingstone and go somewhere else. Maybe very early on I did. But then I got into the real world of auditioning and saw what the level was out there that’s beyond Omaha and how much that takes, and I wasn’t willing to give up my life to do that. That’s basically what it takes — you dedicate everything to it, and everything I had was here. My family was here, my regular day job was here.

Alexander Payne: His Journey in Film

Mini-Profile

Author-journalist-blogger Leo Adam Biga resides in his hometown of Omaha, Nebraska. He writes newspaper-magazine stories about people, their passions, and their magnificent obsessions. He's the author of the books "Alexander Payne: His Journey in Film – A Reporter's Perspective 1998-2012," a compilation of his journalism about the acclaimed filmmaker, and "Open Wide" a biograpy of Mark Manhart. Biga co-edited "Memories of the Jewish Midwest: Mom and Pop Grocery Stores." His popular blog, leoadambiga.wordpress.com, is an online gallery of his work.